238 – STRATEGIC VOYEURISM

How much of it was fabrication, how much of it was mere conjecture, extrapolation or an outright lie, Aun’saal Kel’tau didn’t know. But there was a certainty in the way Echidna spoke that made him listen and consider her words instead of dismissing them as foolishness.

She was so impossibly certain of every word she spoke. Like she’d been there to see it all unfold in person, like she’d been there when the Gods of the Stars and the Immaterial warred amongst each other.

There had to be a kernel of truth in this tale. It also helped that she freely admitted where she was merely guessing or extrapolating from clues.

Sixty million years.

It was an impossible scale of time, one he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. As a Tau, he would be lucky to live for longer than half a century, even with all the medical treatments made available for the Ethereal caste.

“How much of this can be confirmed as truth, instead of myths and legends?” Kel’tau decided to ask, peering up at the sight of a titanic burning being battling what looked like a colossal Aeldari wearing a screaming mask of rage. “These tales of Gods and wars that scoured life from a million worlds sound … fantastical, almost unbelievable.”

“Oh, they are real alright,” the woman gave him a grim smile and waved her hand up at a small panel of the fresco. His eyes followed the gesture. “Does your race not have a myth, or perhaps folklore of a personification of death? A man or perhaps a spectre, wearing tattered black robes and a deep cowl, wielding a scythe as he reaps death?”

Kel’tau felt a shiver of unnatural dread run down his spine, the icy fingers of some primal terror grasping his heart as he looked at the depiction of the monster.

“Aza’gorod, the creature had been named by the Necrontyr. Aeldari called it Kaelis’Ra, the Destroyer of Light, while humanity dubbed him the Grim Reaper, the manifestation of Death itself,” Echidna said, a morbid fascination weighing on her words. “It is a C’Tan, a Star God, the Nightbringer. It had committed such slaughter before its defeat that its very existence carved itself into the collective psyche of the intelligent beings of the galaxy. When one thinks of Death, it is the image of the Nightbringer that pops into their mind. It is the cause of the dread you feel in your heart, the terror you can’t explain when looking at it.”

Kel’tau suppressed a shudder and averted his gaze. Accursed, bewitched painting. He just knew she was messing with him. There couldn’t be such a thing, a creature so terrible that the weight of its sins still could be felt aeons later, just by looking at its depictions … right?

“Luckily for most people calling the Milky Way their home,” Echidna continued, her voice snapping back to being bubbly and cheerful so suddenly it was jarring. “No free, whole C’tan remain today, and better yet, the stupid toads they warred with have been genocided to extinction.”

“These ‘toads’, are-“ Kel’tau started, then his mind finally processed what she’d said, and his gaze snapped to her. “What do you mean no ‘free’ and ‘whole’ C’tan remains? Is this not just ancient history?”

“How could it be?” Echidna said sweetly, too sweetly. There it was again, that sadistic glint in her eye, that amused smirk at his obvious panic. She pointed at a mural, and Kel’tau forced himself to look. “Do these not look familiar?”

He saw the same burning creature, the C’tan called the Burning One, according to Echidna. It was bound and screaming, tendrils of sickly green energy holding it aloft inside a great arc. Before it spread, a horde of mechanical soldiers covered in gleaming silver, their weapons spitting unholy green beams of energy at the struggling God.

It was the ships above, the spacecraft barely shown in the distant sky, that he recognised though. The Tau had no name for them, no definite one at least, but he had seen some of the few recordings they had.

Sometimes, those ships would pass by above frontlines and would scour worlds of Tyranids, Orks or … just life altogether. Though the latest one of those was a mere conjecture, as if it were true, they were very good at it.

They had also never bothered to meet a Tau. Ever.

No diplomacy, no delegation to establish relations, nothing. Just whimsical destruction that may or may not also target the Tau.

“The Necrons,” Echidna said. “Once the slaves of the C’tan, in body and mind, they rebelled and overthrew their squabbling gods as they descended into civil war after eradicating the Old Ones. Every last one of the Star Gods had been hunted down, shattered into fragments, and then enslaved to be used as a source of infinite energy … well, I think a single one just ditched the galaxy? Well, all but one got shattered and turned into a battery. Unfortunately for everyone, the Necrons are very much not dead, just like their ancient foes, the Arldari and Krorks aren’t either. Unlike those two races, though, the Necrons weathered the aeons with the least degradation. Sure, they are now split into dozens of warring Dynasties, but that’s nothing compared to how low the other two had fallen.”

Kel’tau glanced over at the other mentioned species. Aeldari sorcerers calling down storms, throwing plumes of flames thick as buildings, following their manifested Gods into war. The Kr-Orks, bigger, tougher, meaner than their modern-day descendants, and wearing armour that made the most advanced Tau battle-ships look like toys in comparison.

“Why would they fight for these … Old Ones? The Orks and the Eldar never struck me as like-minded,” Kel’tau said, latching onto something that he thought he could understand.

“They are what happens when you give a bunch of space toads with the average ability of forethought of a bucket of kitten-shaped rocks godlike command over the Empyrean,” Echidna said dryly. “I cannot fathom how they were powerful enough to conjure an entire race of Psychic warriors out of nothing, while on the other hand, they failed to foresee how much of a problem leaving the Necrontyr alone to sulk would be. I mean, farseeing and divining the future is like Psyker stuff 101. The stuff they were supposedly the Gods of, but noooo, let’s just tell the cancer-ridden sausage-people to get fucked when they come begging for magical sunscreen. Very smart. They deserve the Darwin Award, if you ask me, every last one of them.”

“Darwin award?” The tau asked, starting to feel a bit numb. He couldn’t understand half the things the woman was speaking about, but he still filed everything away for later consideration. He’d meditate on it and try to untangle every parcel of useful information that could be gained when he had the time.

“Oh,” Echidna startled. “Right. So, there was this guy, Charles Darwin. He was the first human who came up with the concept of evolutionary biology and natural selection, somewhere around the 19th century. The Darwin award is- was a bit of a joke, given to those who die because they were outstandingly moronic. Natural selection, you know?”

The 19th century? According to the time-keeping method humans used … that was more than 40,000 years ago. 800.M1.

“Anyway, the Necron Empire was in a pretty shit spot by the end of their civil war, in which the C’tan were all defeated,” Echidna continued, gesturing towards the next mural. On it stood a single Necron, with a strange three-pronged head-ornament, with a battered army of metal soldiers spread out before him. “Plus, their Silent King, the only one of their kind who had access to his free will, had super depression and colossal amounts of guilt. So he freed his lesser kin from the mind-shackles, then commanded them to go into slumber. The Arldari lost the ability to summon their Gods into war, but their Empire was steadily growing, and it seemed their victory was inevitable. So the Necron went to sleep, and then began the age of the Aeldari, which only came to an end about twenty or so thousand years ago.”

******

I let the overwhelmed Tau go, pretty sure I’d given him some second-hand trauma from my retelling. That was fun. We still had a week, so I could lore dump him human history in the coming days too, and see how he reacted to the fact that his little Empire was very much not one of the big fishes in this hellish pond we lived in.

He probably didn’t fully believe me. I could tell he didn’t outright dismiss me either, though. He was thinking, ruminating over everything and worrying his blue little heart out.

It was probably scary to even consider existing in a galaxy that you shared with a race that genocided a race of God-like beings, then enslaved their own gods.

Necrons were horror movie material at the best of times, hell, even I was scared of actually going to war with a Dynasty, much less with a united Necron Empire. Who knew what messed-up ancient god-killing horror weapon they’d pull out of their dusty vaults if I pressed them into a corner?

I’d rather get into a fist-fight with Khorne than see what the Necrons did when feeling cornered and desperate. They don’t do well in corners, as the Old Ones and the C’tan found out the hard way.

Selene was busy meditating, so I decided to be a thoughtful girlfriend and opted out of annoying her just because I was bored. I was so magnanimous.

Anyway, what to do then? I didn’t feel much like further mentally torturing my prisoners to get some scraps of information at the moment, and neither did I feel like experimenting.

Oh, I know! I grinned, pulling up the coordinates of our destination. My ship would have to arrive in six days, but I could take a little peek at my first ever conquest, couldn’t I?

Scouting. That sounds much more professional. Yep, that’s what I’m doing. Scouting.

My mind-cores chewed over the coordinates, spitting back out something I could actually use for myself. With a grin and a little info-packet about my intentions sent over to Selene, I Blinked.

I was careful, going with Val’s surgical precision and using the stealthiest Blink technique I could do. In a moment, I appeared far above a lush jungle world.

My regular suite of stealth methods were in use, from the sorcerous to the organic. This planet was contested by the Tau Empire and the Imperium of Mankind. There were probably more sensor satellites and such scattered about the system than there was sand in the desert.

I didn’t want to give away that my teleporting capabilities had interstellar reach. Just being able to teleport from one end of a star system to the other would be scary enough for my enemies.

I'd barely had a few seconds to look at the planet, but I’d already taken a liking to it. Its upper atmosphere was densely populated by smaller or larger asteroids, perfect for sensors and listening posts of my own. Or perhaps orbital weapons batteries for when someone invaded the system.

But the planet itself was what was just … perfect. It was a death world alright, teeming with life. The law of the jungle had been ruling over Ravacene for aeons, and it showed, every animal and plant my aura brushed up against was perfected over the ages by natural selection, only the best of the best surviving.

And the thing that gave it all the chance to thrive? The engine that facilitated this entire ecosystem and drove it onwards? The volcanoes and the clouds of volcanic ash that fell upon the world, serving as superb fertiliser for new life wherever it fell. Which was practically everywhere.

The very same volcanoes which made sure that the entire planet was firmly in the jungle climate.

I could already imagine forts spread out, harnessing the heat of the volcanoes and geothermal springs. Unlike on Vallia Prime, I wouldn’t need to plunge my heat-sinks miles into the ground to reach the molten mantle. The molten mantle of Ravacene came to me.

It wouldn’t be a problem either way, but it would be more sturdy this way. More compact and defensible. Which is something I would have to take into consideration going forward, considering I couldn’t personally protect every system under my dominion.

Well, not at once, and it would be tiresome anyway to take care of every little problem. I’d have to set up enough defences here so that the people who’d live here could defend themselves from most threats, while also leaving behind a way for them to contact me. Preferably, someone whose soul I had in my realm so communication would be instantaneous and immune to outside meddling, even from jumped-up Warp parasites thinking themselves Gods.

Astropathic communication was horribly unreliable and much too unwieldy for my liking.

I spread out my aura, just floating there as I took note of every ship in the system. I had been curious, and still was, about how a planet could ever be contested in a galaxy where spaceships and orbital ordnance existed.

I had been the kind of nerd back on Earth who always wondered how war would evolve if you spiced it up a bit. With magic, spaceships, futuristic weaponry or whatever else. I enjoyed such thought experiments, and before me, was seemingly the answer to one of those questions.

Currently, the Imperium was holding orbital superiority over the majority of Ravacene, with a pair of Tau warships holding out above a pair of major fortifications.

That would usually mean the rest of the planet would be at the Astra Militarum’s mercy, with them being supported from orbit by the Imperial Navy … and that would probably be the case on another planet.

Ravacene was covered in thick jungles though, and an endless labyrinthine network of volcanic caverns. The humans all sat in their little forts, stood in their trenches, and trembled as the surrounding forests started speaking Kroot.

This world was the perfect hunting ground for those cannibalistic hunters. I watched a group of them ambush and slaughter an Imperial convoy three times their size, then meld back into the forest. It was only twenty minutes later that a smaller Imperial ship slid into position above the ambush location and sent down an artillery barrage, scouring the forest of life in a wave of fire.

The humid air and the thick, misty forest resisted the flames, minimising the damage. Animals died by the thousands, but the forest was largely untouched, and the Kroot were long gone. In fact, they were feasting on whatever human corpses they’d grabbed during the ambush, hidden away in a cavern kilometres away from the smouldering wreck of the convoy.

Watching it all reminded me of how unimpressed I’d been with the standard Imperial Auspexes and even the warship-grade sensor arrays. They just couldn’t locate the Tau on the planet, hidden away as the majority of them were under the cover of the thick forests, much less the Kroot who thrived in the environment.

Further, the Tau fleet in the system was just returning from a supply run from their supply ships at the edges of the system. Soon, there would be a battle for orbital superiority, and perhaps the Imperial Navy would be pushed out this time, giving the Tau the opportunity to support their troops on the ground.

It was fascinating. I was learning the laws of warfare in this galaxy just by observing the two forces battling before me.

I would have to know all the laws of warfare to systematically break them all, after all. If I knew what was common sense, I could more easily throw my enemies for a loop when I walked all over it without a care in the world.

I settled in to watch.